Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American basic cable and satellite television network launched on December 1, 1977 as the first cable channel for children. It is owned by Viacom through its Viacom Media Networks division's Nickelodeon Group unit and is based in New York City. The channel is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2–17. The channel was originally founded as Pinwheel on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was at the time only available on QUBE, which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner Cable. Pinwheel relaunched as Nickelodeon on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. The channel was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986. As of January 2016, the channel is available to about 92.056 million households (79.086% of households with TV) in the United States. History The name of the channel comes from the first five cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Nickelodeon's history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder. Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984. Nicktoons Nicktoons is the branding for Nickelodeon's original animated television series (although it has seldom been used by the network itself since the 2002 launch of the spin-off digital cable and satellite channel of the same name). Until 1991, the animated series that aired on Nickelodeon were largely imported from foreign countries, and some original animated specials were also featured on the channel up to that point. Original animated series continue to make up a substantial portion of Nickelodeon's lineup, with roughly 6 to 7 hours of these programs airing on the weekday schedule and around nine hours on weekends, including a five-hour weekend morning animation block. Since the late 2000s, after the channel struck a deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2006 to develop the studio's animated films into weekly series, the network has also begun to incorporate Nicktoons that utilize three-dimensional computer animation (such as The Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy & Chum Chum, and Winx Club) in addition to those that are produced through traditional or digital ink and paint. Nickelodeon Movies Nickelodeon Movies is a motion picture production unit that was founded in 1995, as a family entertainment arm of Paramount Pictures (owned by Nickelodeon corporate parent Viacom), which releases the studio's films. The first film released from the studio was the 1996 mystery/comedy Harriet the Spy. Nickelodeon Movies has produced films based on Nickelodeon animated programs including The Rugrats Movie and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, as well as other adaptations and original live-action and animated projects. International Between 1993 and 1995, Nickelodeon opened international channels in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany; by the later year, the network had provided its programming to broadcasters in 70 countries. Since the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Nickelodeon as a brand has expanded into include language- or culture-specific channels for various other territories in different parts of the world including Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Canada, and has licensed some of its cartoons and other content, in English and local languages, to broadcast networks and cable channels such as KI.KA and Super RTL in Germany, RTÉ Two (English language) and TG4 (Irish language) in Ireland, YTV (in English) and Vrak.TV (in French) in Canada, Canal J in France, Alpha Kids in Greece, and CNBC-e in Turkey. External links http://www.nick.com/ Category:Nickelodeon Category:Real World Organization Category:Organization Category:Real World Category:Basic cable Category:Satellite Television Network Category:Network Category:New York City Category:Rocket Power Wiki Category:Rocket Power Category:Content